HOMEGROWN Life: An Ode To The Elusive Asparagus

Unfortunately, this cycle
has given way to asparagus alongside cream-smothered chicken-breast any
time of year. Asparagus is on the shelf of the big box supermarket any
time you might have the hankering for a Spring fling. For too many,
asparagus is now just another source of nutrients as we battle
modernity’s cancers and obesities and diabetes.

At the Root
Cellar, though, asparagus is different. We are clinging to the past and
trying to usher in a different kind of present all at once. We attempt
to celebrate asparagus by placing it on the menu (and in the Missouri
Bounty Box weekly produce subscription program) when it arrives. As we
grow in size and gather around a bigger table of local-minded, seasonal
seekers of authentic food and drink, we start to understand the real
limits of supply in the Missouri market. Searching for 200 bunches of
Asparagus per week in April/May of 2012 has been an interesting
adventure to be sure.

Instead, like much of our lives, in an
attempt to coordinate the production, packing, transport and logistics
of seasonal Missouri eating, we have been forced to go the “Well, guess
we better just do it ourselves route.” This means finding farmers with
the space and desire for bedding down asparagus crowns for the
long-haul. It means finding growers willing to engage in a marriage-like
commitment to perennial plants. It means finding enough souls that
believe the Missouri Bounty Box has enough staying power to endure a
harvest a few years out.

I am one of those farmers that has taken
the asparagus challenge. I purchased 700 asparagus crowns and have many
of them planted already. The initial investment is in crown, fertilizer,
time, land, tillage, time, water, mulch, hoe and time. So capital and
time. The hope is that my family puts in the crowns (and probably twice
as many next year) so that we can grow with the Bounty Box, yielding one
or two bunches per year per crown for the next 20 years. Jenny (my
wife) has already taken to calling it the “boys’ college fund”. Part of
that statement is an attempt to get them to keep participating in an
ownership sort of way in our new asparagus patch. The other part
represents the financial commitment and possible long-term pay-off of
planting a perennial food crop that might or might not end up being a
good use of time and treasure. We shall see which wolf we feed.

We
wanted to write up a post about asparagus to explain how farmers look
at the crop, but also as a sort of apology to our customers. We have
spent many hours in the field and on the phone seeking farmers with an
existing asparagus supply. We had many leads and many sources that told
us a very similar story about 2012: the asparagus came and went with a
flitter this year. It grew and was done almost before any was even able
to be caught long enough for harvest. The spears are already grown into
tall shrubbery looking to produce seed and push down roots.

At the
end of the day, the 2012 growing season holds great promise with a long
and mild and incredibly early Spring. Asparagus was available for our
next-to-last Winter Bounty Box, but the prospects continue to be grim
for any stalks in the beginning of the Spring/Summer Bounty Box season.
Last year we had asparagus from middle May through the first couple of
weeks of June. This year we’ll be lucky to have any asparagus past May
1st.

So goes the annual cycle of living, working and eating the
Missouri agricultural landscape through the Root Cellar’s farm and food
system. 2012 is barely here, yet here we are praying (or hoping, or
using reason and science and capitalism) for a better 2013.

And my prayer/wish goes like this:

Dear Earth,
Please help bring the moisture,
But not too much,
Please help the bugs and fungus,
But only those with good intentions,
Please bring the warmth,
But keep her in check,

Please pass on a message,
To my new friend, Asparagus.

I really want to be friends, to cooperate,
To shepherd your temperament into new stalks.
I hope you like it here,
In sand and clay and rotted manure.
I hope you make it your home, too.

I know that’s a lot to ask,
But I will be here anyway,
Watching, Waiting.
Hoeing, Piling.
Waiting.

Bryce is a farmer, father, writer and rural economic development
entrepreneur. He works with his family to raise organic vegetables,
beef, lamb, chickens, goats and manage the bottomland forest woodlot in
Western Missouri. He has helped to launch numerous social enterprises
including a sustainable wood processing cooperative, a dairy goat cheese
processing facility and a conservation-based land management company
that incentivizes carbon sequestration in forests and grasslands. Bryce
currently co-owns the Root Cellar Grocery in Downtown Columbia,
Missouri, where the local food store operates a weekly produce
subscription program, the Missouri Bounty Box. Bryce, along with 135 other farmers, sells his produce through this program.